Here's the press release for the MusicMetric report which was just on BBC Breakfast... (COMMENTARY BY ME IN CAPITALS)

File sharing in UK hits 345m songs in most in-depth study ever of digital music, 3bn songs across the globe (THIS IS FOR THE FIRST HALF OF 2012)

The most in-depth study ever of the digital music industry has revealed that UK-based BitTorrent consumption hit 43 million album and single releases downloaded during the first half of 2012.

Torrents are bundles of files - so one torrent could include numerous songs. According to the first ever Digital Music Index (DMI), published later this week by global analysts Musicmetric, 78 per cent of the torrents were albums and 22 per cent singles. (I THOUGHT ALBUMS WERE DEAD?? I WONDER WHAT PERCENT WERE PEOPLE DOWNLOADING ENTIRE DISCOGRAPHIES?)

Musicmetric anonymously tracks the entire BitTorrent sphere - meaning the data sample offers the most extensive and accurate picture yet of the digital music universe. No data is retained and it is not possible to identify any individuals through the anonymous data. (HOW DO THEY GET THIS DATA THEN?)

If each album is assumed to contain at least 10 songs, then the total number of tunes downloaded would exceed 345 million for the first half of 2012. Apple sells new singles for 99p and albums for £7.99 in its iTunes store. (HOWEVER, THEY DO NOT KNOW WHAT PERCENT OF THESE PEOPLE WENT ON TO BUY THE MUSIC. WE ALSO HAVE NO IDEA HOW MANY TIMES PEOPLE LISTENED TO THE MUSIC. WOULDN'T A YOUTUBE STREAM ROYALTY PERHAPS BE A FAIRER PRICE COMPARISON?)

The DMI will reveal that Manchester had the highest rate of downloading per capita, followed by Nottingham and Southampton.

Torrents can be legal as well as containing illegal files - but the majority of albums listed are not legally available via BitTorrent.

According to Musicmetric, the most popular pirated albums in the UK were Ed Sheeran’s + (Plus), Rizzle Kicks’ Stereo Typical and Rihanna’s Talk That Talk for the first half of 2012. (SEEN A FEW REPORTS ELSEWHERE TALKING ABOUT "REAL MUSIC FANS" LOL)

Of course there are other important aspects of the digital music industry where social media plays a key role in allowing artists to interact with fans.

Musicmetric tracks everything that happens online with music, bringing together downloads, online plays, social media interaction and sales which allows for any artist to be easily measured and benchmarked against another.

Knowing what impact advertising campaigns, tours or TV appearances make is vital for the industry.

Ed Sheeran’s latest album + (Plus) topped the ubiquity rankings hitting number one by total number of downloads in over 460 towns around the UK, although those in Bournemouth showed a rather different taste in music with the Discography of The Eagles topping their chart. (PEOPLE IN BOURNEMOUTH ARE OLDER THEN)

Gregory Mead, chief executive of Musicmetric, said:

“Knowing exactly where your fans are has long been a holy grail for record labels. Understanding what drives them to engage will be vital to helping the industry to really prosper in the coming years.

"For the first time, we have evidence that blocking Pirate Bay had little effect on BitTorrent downloading. It is also clear however, that availability of streaming services like Spotify does reduce this activity as people have greater access to music they want via legitimate means.

"The challenge for copyright holders is to find ways to monetise music files torrented online. The potential for converting revenue lost through file trading is not entirely a fairy tale, however it will differ with different genres and life stages of artist.

"While the file sharing network is largely ignored as a proactive channel, little progress can be made on figuring out how this might be possible.

"Clarity on the drivers between social media, file sharing and gig activity is what can deliver the industry and in our report these are being put under the microscope for the first time, which could prove a major turning point for the music industry.”

Top 20 UK cities for the first half of 2012 based on BitTorrent downloads over that period ARRANGED PER CAPITA (as this is a truer reflection of concentration) are:

City Downloads over 6 month period

1. Manchester 1,317,012

2. Nottingham 598,621

3. Southampton 480,151

4. Liverpool 927,535

5. Sheffield 748,301

6. Leicester 487,406

7. Stoke-on-trent 380,872

8. Glasgow 1,037,934

9. Cardiff 348,603

10. Leeds 566,589

11. Bristol 424,790

12. Edinburgh 519,736

13. Wolverhampton 257,840

14. Derby 195,632

15. Reading 190,053

16. Bradford 233,339

17. Kingston upon Hull 256,479

18. Birmingham 803,741

19. Coventry 198,481

20. London 4,565,502

The Top 20 albums downloaded in the UK in the first 6 months of 2012 by total torrent downloads during the entire first six months of 2012:

1. Ed Sheeran - + (Plus)

2. Rizzle Kicks - Stereo Typical

3. Rihanna - Talk That Talk

4. Jessie J - Who You Are

5. Olly Murs - In Case You Didn't Know

6. Emeli Sandé - Our Version of Events

7. Ben Howard - Every Kingdom

8. Chase & Status – No More Idols

9. Chris Brown - F.A.M.E

10. Gotye - Making Mirrors

11. Noel Gallagher - Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds

12. Drake - Take Care

13. Adele - 21

14. Kanye West - Watch The Throne

15. Beyoncé - 4

16. Snow Patrol - Fallen Empires

17. The Script - Science & Faith

18. James Morrison - The Awakening

19. JLS - Jukebox

20. Florence and The Machine - Ceremonials

Matt Mason, executive director at BitTorrent, said:

“Musicmetric’s findings offer a fascinating insight into the realities of the market which are essential if we want to see the music industry get back to its peak. These figures show for the first time that blocking the Pirate Bay had zero effect on piracy. It's short-sighted to think that we can simply tell people to stop and they will. But great data like this will help companies build better services and platforms that empower artists to distribute their work into the BitTorrent ecosystem in ways that make sense for them. Consumers have used the BitTorrent protocol for over decade because it's the best way to move large files. That's true for musicians too. The challenge is building the right business models on top of the technology, which is something we're very committed to here."

“As a way of sharing large files torrents are massively valuable and we shouldn’t forget the vast amount of legal use we have them. In the last month alone, we've worked with the Internet Archive to add 1.5mm pieces of music, books and movies to the BitTorrent ecosystem with the permission and blessing of the creators. The BitTorrent protocol is simply the network through which data flows, not the content itself. But knowing what people are downloading and where is incredibly value to labels and artists."

“The opportunity here lies in creating immersive and innovative packages of content for real music fans – and this is something we’re increasingly doing with global artists like Counting Crows and DJ Shadow. The more people grasp the options at their disposal to better engage with fans through BitTorrent, the quicker we’ll see all the fantastic artists and content creators around us prosper again.”

Michael Fiebach, CEO of Fame House, said:

"We are in a state of transition in the music industry. Monetizing streaming platforms is probably the future for recorded music sales, along with supplementary niche markets like vinyl, CDs, and specialty items. However, we are still very far-off from there being a new sustainable model for recorded music. This creates a situation where the best way to really make money is through touring (and licensing depending on the act). To increase touring revenues, you have to gain significant attention online. File sharing is 1 way to do this. Bittorrent is an ecosystem of music lovers who are seeking content. Why not utilize that as a promotional channel? To me, it is a no-brainer."

Nigel Davies, a partner at Davenport Lyons a leading music industry law firm, said:

“These figures bring real context to the downloading debate, although I don’t think people always fully appreciate what they’re doing or the damage it does to songwriters and artists – the very people music fans wouldn’t want to steal from.

“The holy grail of any form of social media, advertising and sponsorship is a metric to clearly assess the impact of what’s happening. There’s no substitute for the huge love fans feel for bands, so being able to measure, analyse and capture it in a positive way is critical - metrics are absolutely vital.

“There are various measures copyright holders can implement to protect their rights but what’s necessary – particularly in an increasingly converging world - is a combination of effort using the legal system, education and communication. There’s a missing link between communicating what torrents do and what value they lose.

“The current trend for production of increasingly enriched content (physical and digital) offers what should be an attractive alternative. The DMI shows having suitable alternatives drives down torrent usage. There’s no doubt about the genius of platforms such as Spotify. They are quick and rich – fabulous tools for bringing new music to the attention of different people.

“If we can better understand the dynamics of the digital market, we will be better placed to navigate through them.”

Notes for editors

Musicmetric is the trading name of the music analytics product line from Semetric Ltd, registered in London, UK, with offices in Shoreditch, London and Los Angeles, USA.

How Musicmetric works

Musicmetric tracks online trends in music and makes this data available to those working in the music industry. The data covers activity on social media, mentions and sentiment on news and blogs, sales and file sharing activity on the BitTorrent network. On the BitTorrent network Musicmetric geographically and anonymously tracks the number of downloads any artist or release gets to a city level, around the globe, every hour.

The BitTorrent network is a distributed file-sharing network. The only data that a torrent holds is information about the location of different pieces of the target file. Torrents work by dividing the target file into small information chunks, held by a number of users connected to the network. Through this method, users are able to download large files quickly by downloading different parts of the file from multiple different people all at the same time, and reassembling them at the end.

(From what I can tell) People who very regularly download music illegally tend to use non-torrent sites like Mediafire and Zippyshare.
So, as lovely as these figures are, they still don't paint quite the full picture.

I'd guess that ooooh maybe half or more downloaders are kids who are too young to have any means of payment ID for downloading LEGALLY and clearly live nowhere near a record shop

also, I'd take issue with MusicMetric's free use of the words pirates and piracy to describe people who download music illegally as piracy very specifically denotes people who DISTRIBUTE illegal downloads - I suppose they are presuming all these folks leave their torrent clients running to get their share ratios up

'Real Pirates' are people who share, and get absolutely nothing back for doing so. What we should really be wondering is why anyone in their right mind feels that the world would be a better place if the Ed Sheeran record is available for free? Who are those who start the sharing (surely if they can monitor all this, 'they' can see who the first few people sharing things are). I wonder what percentage of these pirated tracks originated from the same 20 or so people? I mean, if you look at TV and Films, there's often one person sharing something, and it's often the same 'handle' sharing every major cinema release or episode of a hit show.

a pirate copy was traditionally goods passed off and sold as the original
as opposed to home taping which was making an illegal copy for personal use - the RIAA used these definitions and distinctions for years but now they seem to have thrown out the rather cosy sounding 'home taping' in order to ramp up the 'piracy' bad guy angle

and this study - like MANY others - appears to focus on the volume of 'consumers' or HOME_TAPERS instead of the small number of 'releasers' or PIRATES or even smaller number of leakers (you'd probably call these guys cunts)

...when other studies show that people who download are vastly more likely to buy music than those who don't. There was a Norwegian study that concluded downloaders buy 20 times more music than non-downloaders.

but take Manchester for example with an Metropolitan population of 2.2million having 1.3million downloads in 6 months
that's 7300 downloads a day between 2.2 million people - probably loads more shoplifting going on
and that's the highest rate in the UK?

hmm

plus there's no way of factoring in how many people download stuff they have already bought (it's quicker to torrent an album than it is to rip from - even from CD in many cases) though I guess this would be a small but significant percentage - though probably a huge percentage in the case of Bournemouth & the best of The Eagles

also consider this... if one person downloads say the 500 must hear dubstep tracks or the Guardian's 500 must hear albums, and 20 other people download a couple of albums, couldn't that account for all of the downloading in Manchester? Maybe there's one person in Bournemouth who downloaded the entire Eagles catalogue, and all the bootlegs, and then told three mates to download the torrent off of him, couldn't that be the reason why this is now a 'statistic'?